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ANZ backs public breach reporting

Tim Stewart

— 1 minute read

08 March 2017

ANZ chief executive Shayne Elliott has given his in principle support for the public airing of ASIC breach reports and the naming of responsible executives.

Appearing before a government inquiry into the four major banks yesterday, ANZ chief executive Shayne Elliott said he was "largely supportive" of the committee's proposal to make ASIC breach reports public.

The standing committee on economics is currently conducting hearings for its second Review of the Big Four Banks report.

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One of the key recommendations of the inquiry's first report was that Australian Financial Services Licence holders be required to make ASIC breach reports public within five days of reporting them to the regulator.

The committee also recommended that the names of senior executives responsible for the team(s) where the breach occurred be made public, along with the consequences for said senior executives.

But ANZ chief executive Shayne Elliott was more forthcoming than his fellow chief executives, telling the committee his bank is "largely supportive" of public breach reporting – with a few caveats.

"We support this. We're saying if there's a breach that has occurred, and it has been reported, we are very happy to make that public and we're happy to name the responsible executive for the division in which that breach occurred," Mr Elliott said.

"So, if there was a breach in [ANZ Wealth], we would name [group executive, Wealth Australia] Alexis [George]," he said.

However, it could take more than five days to "get to the bottom" of what had caused the breach, Mr Elliott said.

"So it would be a preliminary report – and we're happy to do that. Given that it's preliminary it's very difficult at that time to be able to articulate clearly what the consequences are. So we're not shying away from it, we're just saying at that time it's very difficult to know," he said.

ANZ's formal response to the committee said the bank believes the "proposal to increase the level of public disclosure when things go wrong can largely be implemented".